The present invention relates generally to the field of web searching, and more particularly to the utilization of search engine results.
Web search engines (“search engines”) are known. Search engines are software systems designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Search engines produce results in response to search engine queries, which typically include keywords (also referred to as “search terms”). Search engine results typically include a mix of web pages (also referred to as “pages”), images, and other types of files.
Search engine results are commonly provided to search engine users in the form of hyperlinks. A hyperlink (also referred to as a “link”) is a reference to data (typically, a web page) that a user can directly follow by clicking, hovering over, or otherwise selecting. Hyperlinks typically include hypertext, which is the text that a user of a web browser sees when a hyperlink is displayed.
When a user of a web browser (also referred to as a “browser”) selects a hyperlink, the browser sends a request to the server holding the destination webpage. The request includes a referrer field, which indicates the last page that the user was on (that is, the page where the user clicked the link). The referrer field can also include additional information about the referring web page. Specifically, when the referring web page is a search engine, the referrer field can sometimes include the user's search engine query.